Research Group Seminars,
Workshops, and Symposia:
The Early Years

Since 1990, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence has held Seminars, Workshops, and Symposia (organized or co-organized by Mildred Budny) variously at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and at other centers in England, Japan, and the United States.  In England, many of these sessions belonged to the series of Research Group Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts.”  At libraries, the sessions have taken place over relevant manuscripts in the collection, supplemented by photographs.  Elsewhere, the sessions have usually been accompanied by displays or exhibitions of photographs (mostly by Mildred Budny).

View Toward the Chapel, Upon Entering Corpus Christi College, in mid-September 1994 photography © Mildred Budny

View Toward the Entrance to the Parker Library in mid-1989. Photograph © Mildred Budny.

Research Group Seminars and Workshops on
“The Evidence of Manuscripts” (1989‒1995)

I.  The Seminars and Workshops in Their Series

16 December 1989

17 March 1990

“Manuscript Illustrations as Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Life”
     Parker Library, 20 May 1989

“Legal Manuscripts, Their Make-Up and Contents”
Parker Library, 16 December 1989

“Facsimiles, Diplomatic Texts and Editions”
(Preview of
The Palaeographical and Textual Handbook)
Parker Library, 17 March 1990

“Sixteenth-Century Interventions
in Anglo-Saxon and Related Manuscripts”
Parker Library, 22 April 1990

Trial Project for the “Medieval Binding Structures Project” (1989-1990)

12 October 1991

13 April 1990

13 July 1991

“Corpus Christi College MS 139:
A Twelfth-Century Historical Miscellany”
Parker Library, 28 September 1990

“Technical Literature and its Form and Layout in Early Medieval Manuscripts”
Parker Library, 13 July 1991

“The Production, Make-up and Handling of Medieval Manuscripts”
A Workshop
Parker Library, 5 October 1991

“Sixteenth-Century Transcripts of Anglo-Saxon Texts”
Parker Library, 12 October 1991

5 June 1992

16 November 1991

Corpus Christi College MS 383: An Anglo-Saxon Legal Codex of the Late Eleventh or Early Twelfth Century”
Parker Library, 16 November 1991

“Anglo-Saxon Writing Materials and Practices:
The Archaeological Record, Linguistic and Literary Evidence,
and the Manuscripts Themselves”
Parker Library, 11 January 1992

Corpus Christi College MSS 23 and 223: The Corpus Prudentius and the Saint-Bertin Prudentius”
Parker Library, 5 June 1992

“Research on Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Cambridge

Entrance to Pembroke College. Photo by Jakob Leimgruber (JREL) via Wikipedia Commons.

and Oxford”
Pembroke College, University of Oxford, 20 June 1992

Research Group Events in Japan in November and December 1992
1. “The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and its Work”

College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo at Komaba, 28 November 1992

2. “Aspects of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence”

Chuo University, Tokyo, December 1992

3. “The Integrated Approach to Manuscript Studies”

Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, 5 December 1992, as part of the Eighth Annual General Congress of the Japan Society for Medieval English Studies

Approaching Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, on 5 December 1992. Photograph © Mildred Budny.

“Corpus Christi College MS 44:

The Corpus Canterbury Pontifical”
Parker Library, 27 February 1993

“Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts from Worcester”
Pembroke College, Oxford, March 1993

“Corpus Christi College MS 201:
An Eleventh-Century Collection of Homiletic, Legal, and Other Texts in Latin and Old English”
Parker Library, 19 June 1993

“British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A.iii:
An Eleventh-Century Miscellany of Latin and Old English Texts
Owned by Christ Church, Canterbury”
British Library, 9 August 1993

Diagram by Leslie French for the Seminar of 9 August 1993

© The British Library Board, Cotton MS Tiberius A III, folio 117v

“Professionals’ Views of Manuscript Writing:
Calligraphic Techniques in Medieval Manuscripts and their Modern Descendants”
Parker Library, 10 November 1993

“Corpus Christi College MS 41:  The Corpus Old English Bede”
Parker Library, 11 December 1993

Report for 15 January 1994

15 January 1994

“Imaging Aids in the British Library”
A Visit
British Library, London (in its former building, with the British Museum), December 1993

 (Report in the “Appendix”
to the Booklet for the next item)

“Image-Processing and Manuscript Studies”
A Workshop
Parker Library, 15 January 1994
(With Report Booklet)

“Pigment-Analysis of Corpus Manuscripts”
Parker Library, 4 March 1994

“King Alfred and His Legacy”

Faculty of English, University of Oxford, 29 April 1994

19 September 1994

20 April 1994

“Marginalia in Manuscripts”
Parker Library, 24 June 1994

“Medieval Manuscript Fragments: Their Problems and Challenges”
Parker Library, 19 August 1994

“Canterbury Manuscripts”
Parker Library, 19 September 1994

“Color in Medieval Manuscripts”
Parker Library, June 1995

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II.  Seeds and Fruits and More Seeds

Some fruits of these seminars are reported in the principal publication for the outside-funded Research Project on “The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon and Related Manuscripts” (besides the five Annual Reports to the Leverhulme Trust):

Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue (2 volumes, 1997).

Also, this series of seminars inspired some others.  Not only our own events, which flowed naturally from them.

For example, according to its own description, the First Seminar on the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts (25-26 April 1994), held at the University of Copenhagen, “was modelled on a series of more informal meetings held by the ‘Research group on manuscript evidence’ based at The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where a relatively small group of scholars, librarians and conservators meets several times a year to discuss manuscripts from as many different points of view as possible in order better to understand the manuscript as an historical artifact (as described in R. I. Page’s article in the proceedings)”.
[Formerly online via http://arnamagnaeansk.ku.dk/publikationer/care_and_conservation/cc_l, accessed on 24 September 2007.] Now online again.

That article by R. I. Page is listed among our Publications.

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Next, following the move of its principal base to the United States in 1994, the Research Group began its annual series of Symposia on “The Transmission of the Bible”.  The first of them was invited by our Associate Jane Rosenthal, who had attended our Seminar in June 1992 on the pair of early medieval Prudentius manuscripts at Corpus Christi College.

9 April 1994

10 March 2000

The workshops, symposia, and other scholarly Events occurring in various centers over the following years are listed in our Events Archive.  Our Sponsored Sessions and other activities, starting in 1993, at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, are listed in our Congress Archive.

Our Publications report many of these and also other activities, including our copyright multilingual digital font Bembino, in which this website is set.  You could download this font and its descriptive booklet for FREE.

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